Sun Labour Trident Smear Busted

Not content with its disgraceful manipulation of Gary Lineker’s relatives, the Super Soaraway Currant Bun has, as part of its unyielding mission to rubbish anything and everything about the Labour Party, attacked the idea that the UK is dependent on the USA when it comes to its flagship nuclear deterrent, the Trident missile system. The result has been yet another easily unravelled crock of crap.

An unsavoury sleazebag airs his views

The level of honesty on view was clear from the outset, as the article “CORBYN IS A ‘THREAT TO THE WORLD’, US EXPERTS SAY … They are very concerned about his support for nuclear disarmament” bore the by-line of the paper’s alleged “Westminster Correspondent” Harry Cole. The lying began at the very beginning: “US Experts” [plural] did not claim that the Labour leader was a threat to the world.

Still, details, eh? Master Cole has managed one “expert”, former Bush administration advisor Franklin Miller, who said “The idea that the UK would unilaterally give up its nuclear deterrent … is sheer lunacy … The only idea crazier than that is to insist that the US is in charge of the independent UK deterrent”. Two things here.

One, not renewing Trident and unilateral nuclear disarmament are two different things. And two, the USA is effectively in charge of the “independent” UK deterrent, despite Miller blustering “at no time was there ever any evidence (or even a suggestion) that a US ‘veto’ existed over a British PM’s ability to execute independently the UK’s Polaris or Trident force … If there was a switch the US could flick, I would have known about it”.

Smile, while the money's earning ... Smile, while your pants are burning

Once again, Cole is being singularly disingenuous. He tells “The Sun can reveal that Labour’s new Shadow Defence Secretary controversially claimed last year that Britain’s nuclear weapons are controlled by the USA – a nutty conspiracy theory squashed by experts … Ms Thornberry claimed in an interview in September 2015 that ‘we won’t be in charge of’ our nuclear weapons, ‘the Americans will be in charge of’ them”.

This is not a “nutty conspiracy theory”, and here I cite evidence to a Commons defence committee: “The fact that, in theory, the British Prime Minister could give the order to fire Trident missiles without getting prior approval from the White House has allowed the UK to maintain the façade of being a global military power. In practice, though, it is difficult to conceive of any situation in which a Prime Minister would fire Trident without prior US approval … The fact that the UK is completely technically dependent on the USA for the maintenance of the Trident system means that one way the USA could show its displeasure would be to cut off the technical support needed for the UK to continue to send Trident to sea …In practice, the only way that Britain is ever likely to use Trident is to give legitimacy to a US nuclear attack by participating in it”.

Indeed, a cross-party report from the independent Trident Commission concluded that Britain’s deterrent was “a hostage to American goodwill … If the United States were to withdraw their cooperation completely, the UK nuclear capability would probably have a life expectancy measured in months rather than years”.

The Guardian’s Richard Norton-Taylor explained “Not only are Britain's Trident missiles in a common pool shared with the US and maintained in Kings Bay, Georgia, its nuclear warheads are designed and maintained at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston with the help of US know-how, as recently declassified documents on the UK-US Mutual Defence Agreement confirmed”.

That, Master Cole, is not a “nutty conspiracy theory”, but cold, hard facts. Another cold, hard fact is that the Sun’s “expert” [singular] who claims Labour is a “threat to the world” works for the Heritage Foundation, one of the last places one should look for non-partisan analysis on defence matters, or indeed any matters.

And a further cold, hard fact is that Cole once again has his pants on fire.